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Caer Polaris
Type: Market Affinity: Actor Level: 1 Ruler: Countess Muriana ni Scathach Location: University of Colorado at Boulder Old Main was completed on April 18, 1876, a few months before Colorado became a state. When the University of Colorado opened in 1877, it barely filled Old Main. The entire university was housed there, including classrooms and the living quarters for the president and his family, and the custodian and his wife. From a single building "way out on a prairie," 51 acres of donated land, and 44 students, the university would become a major public research university with more than 200 buildings on 786 acres, and over 29,000 students in nine colleges and schools. Today Old Main links CU's past and present. On the top floor, the CU Heritage Center portrays the university's history through photographs, displays, and changing exhibits. Appropriately, what was once CU's first collegiate department, now the College of Arts and Sciences, has its offices in Old Main. ''- Taken from the Website of the University of Colorado at Boulder Tucked neatly within the swarm of an institute of higher education, the freehold of once known as Valley's Gate had a longstanding tradition as a County hold; while it was not one that was hidden away in Old Main from the building's completion in 1876, westward expansion pushed America (and the Kithain that had come over from a variety of places) to fill out what land it hadn't. Concordia could not simply exist on the east coast, as it were, and expansion was not simply a mortal notion. It was 1920 by the time balefire was brought from Tara-Nar, via several freeholds along the way, to the the Kingdom of the Feathered Snake, then upward to the duchy and then to the holding itself; rumors and history both have it that the duchy may have been in a bit of a contested area between Feathered Snake and the Kingdom of Grass, but any since tensions have been long resolved (and to most but the most skilled loremasters, long forgotten). This was long before the Resurgence, as well, so the hold itself was commoner kept until those fateful days in 1969. Upon the Resurgence, and the following Accordance War, Valley's Gate as usurped by a far more severe line of sidhe; rumors at the time circulated that the Beltaine Blade had a hand in the gain of the holding, but that again, is left to rumor, and perhaps something to spook would-be future attacks on the holding. However, while Valley's Gate had been one of the most longstanding holds within the Duchy, and even within the Kingdom of the Burning Sun (the latter is something else contested by many), the holding simply couldn't just expect to live without the threat of Winter bearing overhead - The threat of Winter came; when it did, it came hard. An organization called Horizon, primarily made of sidhe, stormed the holding in the early hours of early March of 2011 – perhaps it was a hangover from Carnival, perhaps it was simply the hubris that came with being a traditionalist hold who thought themselves unstoppable, but in those early hours, Valley's Gate fell. It lay dormant for – well, as long as anyone was willing to let it; the attacks that followed, the disappearances of courtiers who fell under the ducal flag complicated matters for a time, but days prior to Beltaine, a crowd moved to reclaim the holding with a torch of the ducal fire. Henceforth, it was decreed by Duchess Lianne Raphael, and seen by the party at hand (though not without a rumble of discontent regarding rulership), that this holding would be known as Caer Polaris, and that due to the fact that there was no Countess (the Gwydion who had ruled previous had died during the tumultuous time of the attack on the holding and the aftermath therein) meant that there was a hole within the hierarchy. This hole would be filled by Muriana ni Scathach, a commoner whose experience in Pacifica in dealing with a commoner majority holding would be well used; she would keep a council of representatives from each major freehold within the county (and therein the duchy as well) to accomplish the goals of unity, perseverance, and equality throughout. As for the hold itself, while its mortal location has not changed, and the rath itself has not moved, the holding has been transformed by the whim of the ruler. Within the tower of the building is the rath to its Near Dreaming counterpart; a deceptively light shelf of rather old (and oft ignored) books guards a secret passage that, unlike that of Hearthsong, leads to mundane stairs that go somewhere without counting; in order to find a place on the ever-expanding campus for the holding, alternate paths were made betwixt walls and underground; a labyrinth of red-rock sheets, as it were. Within these tunnels lie modest living quarters, purposefully sparse, though, for unenchanted visitors – after all, if visitors need not be Enchanted, they have little business within the hold in the first place. At the crux of three particular tunnels, though, there is a small crest carved into the damp rock there; any passerby would assume it was the crest of the school itself, and not anything of Kithain – it was a tree, with a later carving over it symbolizing the branches on fire; running a finger around the crest, widdershins, will allow the carving to pop out, a mechanism to open the rath into the dreaming. The hold of Caer Polaris rests there, and lies almost identically to the manor house that lay on the mortal side. Outside of the house, though, which would serve as a gatehouse to the rest of the freehold, and no one's constant quarters (save for a small slew of chimerical thanes, to keep any attacks from surprising those within) – outside of said gatehouse, though, lay a small town, a cluster of blocks tied together by a series of canals and bridges – almost Venetian in architecture, leading out to a small open lake. On that lake looms a large ship – or at least a ship that feels a bit too large for these waters; that said, though, anyone who knows of the Countess' past would not be surprised that the smaller scaled attempt at a galleon. The members of the ruling motley are housed within this boat, and should any threat be seen coming from the rath, the boat will, at least as a distraction, set sail on the water. Oh, and watch for those canons, too. This is, after all, a pirate town with a pirate ship. 'The Polaris Oath''' There is no oath in regard to Caer Polaris specifically; all who dwell within the county are expected, however, to have sworn their allegiances to the Duke and Duchess of Caer Crimson Canyon. The general laissez-faire attitude maintains a general law to uphold the Escheat, and to not pass undue judgment. Nobility will be given a branch in this court to maintain relations, but it has been noted, despite the recent wave of change throughout the holding, that Polaris is decidedly more commoner tied than any other major holding in the duchy. Category:Changeling Category:Setting Category:Outdated